The Tree of Life Evolves

In honor of Darwin Day (Charles would have been 204 years old today, if he were immortal or something), here’s a few of my favorite trees of life from through the ages. Some were designed as scientific references, and some as purely creative tributes, but all are works of art.

From Top:

• Darwin’s original sketch from On the Origin of Species (1859)
• Ernst Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (1866)
• The famous Hillis Plot drawn on a felled tree 
• An imaginative take on the tree of life by Rosalyn Schanzer
• Richard Amm’s tribute to the “grandeur in this view of life”, with biology’s increasing complexity growing from the center of a shell

As Darwin was inspired by the beauty of nature’s forms to discover how all of Earth’s species are connected, may we be inspired to discover the beauty in science for ourselves. 

Happy Darwin Day!